Buddhist Geeks (Video)

  Episode Description: Willoughby Britton, contemplative scientist and neuroscience researcher, spoke at the Buddhist Geeks Conference 2012 about mixing Dharma with scientific enterprise. Scientific research of meditation is undoubtedly one of the forces behind the proliferation of the Dharma, and offers much promise as a "Dharma technology". However, Britton asserts that significant challenges remain before we can harness the full power of scientific enterprise. Episode Links: Willoughby Britton at Brown University Britton Lab Transcript: Willoughby:    Hi everyone. Audience:    Hi. Willoughby:    It’s good to be here today. I’m a contemplative neuroscientist and I’ve been in the field about a little over a decade. So I thought I might share with you today what I see as the science of meditation, where it’s been, where it is and where it’s going. This conference I was here last year as well and it seems like a big theme is to integrate and the tension between the old and the new, conservers and adapters, tradition and modernity. And for the last 20 years I would say science has been firmly on the side of the adapters, and as an adapter has thrown out anything that is not congruent with the modern world view and also makes an effort to appeal to the values of modern society. So it’s probably not surprising that karma and rebirth haven’t really made the cut off in the scientific part of the dharma. Now as the Dharma and meditation has made its way into medicine and now is being applied to pretty much everything from back pain to writer’s block, there’s been another quiet casualty of modern dharma cherry picking and that is that…posture, that’s one of them. That is the liberative teachings of the dharma itself.  Pretty much the center piece, if you want to call it enlightenment, that’s also been dismissed as really just folklore. Now if you’re going to dismiss liberation you might as well just throw out Buddhism too. So science finds itself in a bit of a bind. On one hand there’s this like massive everyone is going crazy for meditation. There are actually more than a million new meditators every year in America alone. So that’s on one hand. And on the other hand, this sort of dogmatic distancing against anything that’s considered religious. So how are you going to describe the point and the goal of meditation if you’re not allowed to use talk about enlightenment or Buddhism. So that’s kind of the bind that science finds itself in. Now you have to remember that science is actually really good at precision. Think about chemistry lab in high school. You have this like specific chemicals. It’s all in the manual. The goal is preset. You do step 1. You put them together. It turns black and bubbles. You do step 2. It’s systematic and its precise, right. That’s what scientist is really good at. But something really bizarre is happening in contemplative science which is that we’re using really unbelievably vague language. It’s really uncharacteristic of science. So, one of the most obvious examples of this is just the word meditation. As you know that doesn’t really actually mean anything. And we use it all the time. And actually if you look in scientist articles it would be the effect of meditation. And we use it like it’s this monolithic entity but it’s actually like really really vague term. We improved a little bit on the meditation front. Now we have three practices I think in medicine and science. Now there’s sort of a new iteration of this vagueness and that’s the term mindfulness. Mindfulness is now standing for both a trait, a state, a practice, and the goal all in one. In fact, Jon Kabat-Zinn recently in an article in contemporary Buddhism said, “You know I never meant the term mindfulness to be anything specific. I actually meant to be a place holder, an umbrella term for the entire dharma.”

  Episode Description: In this episode, taken from the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2012, Martine Batchelor explores the process of grasping and its amplifying/exaggerating effects. She also goes into how meditation can help us to de-grasp/release our holding thus allowing for a more creative engagement and creative response. Episode Links: Martine Batchelor Transcript: Martine:    So I want to talk about big things because in a way what interest me is how can we be free and at what place can we be free. So where is freedom? And how can meditation help us with freedom. And I would say freedom is at the point of contact. So meditation helps us to see the point of contact. We come into contact through the senses with things around us and within us. And what do we do. Generally, there is a feeling to and generally we go very fast. I don’t know what you think of my little shirt. I’m quite happy with my little shirt. But you might say “hmm. How come she’s wearing this shirt? A Buddhist meditation teacher should not wear this kind of shirt.  She should wear a Chinese shirt.” Or, you might think “wow where did she get it or maybe I want one like this. I want one for me.” And so in a way you see something what do you do with it. Do you creatively engage with it or do you grasp at it? So first I like to talk about the process of grasping to show the difference cause I’m not saying we should always creatively engage and never grasp. I think grasping is part of being human. But we do grasp 98% or do we grasp 50%. This is as to be a question, is a freedom we have. And so grasping, how does it work. Let’s say this is very precious to me.  Its gold or diamond or it’s the greatest truth in the universe. And because it’s precious, I hold onto it like this. And if I do this for any length of time what happens. Two things happen. The first thing I get a cramp in the arm. And this is a sign of grasping is tension. And so that’s what I want to talk this morning is about signal. How can we be more aware of the signal of how does it feel to be creatively engaged? How does it feel to grasp? And what’s the problem with grasping. So that’s the first thing tension. The second thing which we have with this is that when I grasp like this like that, I cannot use my hand for anything else. So I’m actually stuck to what I’m grasping at. So then what is the solution? First solution, Buddhist long ago cut their hand.  Ascetic practices. Then I mean you don’t grasp. Personally I think this is a little drastic. Second solution, get rid of the object. And this is something that advertising industry has really understood, the process of gasping and how it works. So you see a shop and you think hmm. It’s like the thing is saying come, come. You really want me. You have to have me yesterday. You know the latest iPhone 46, or the latest iPad 25, or whatever it is, Instagram. There is a new one I recently heard about. But the thing is not there. The grasping is not in the object. The object just arises upon condition so the problem is not the object. And so I would say that the meditation process is a process of releasing, of opening our hand so the object is still there but we can move it. There is freedom. Because the process of grasping works in this way. You come into contact. You have the feeling to. We don’t have the time to talk about this. It’s very interesting. You have the feeling to and you identify.  It’s very important to see that.... It’s not moving.  This is a film.  We’re still total grasping here.  This is a film of 10 mins.  Ahhh...we’re moving here.  I hope we won’t stay there.  Great!  We’re moving...he’s moving too.  So, uh, you have the grasping? You identify. You have very much to see that the grasping and identification come together. You identify. You limit yourself to what you grasp at, and then the big problem with grasping is you magnify.

  Episode Description: What is the message of Buddhism today? Self-improvement? A fulfilling life? An understanding of the mysteries of the human condition? How does McLuhan's famous dictum "the medium is the message" apply now that people are connecting with Buddhism in radically different ways? In this episode, taken from the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2012, Ken McLeod explores how McLuhan’s famous dictum “the medium is the message” might apply to Buddhism. Episode Links: Unfettered Mind Transcript: Ken McLeod: Winter is coming. The summer of affluence is over. There are forces at work in the world which in my characteristically Eeyore pessimistic view, threaten the very foundations of western civilization. I’m not talking just about climate change, environmental issues, although those are certainly very high on the agenda. But I’m also talking about the emergence of a global elite which is making a mistake, that elites have [made] historically, that they can get along without the rest of us. So, the upshot of this is that we are entering an age which is probably going to be different from the extraordinarily benign circumstances which I and my generation grew up in. Things are getting harsher. Resources are more limited. The Club of Rome’s Limitations of Growth may have been a little bit premature in the 60s but we may actually be hitting some limits now. And when this happens, when things start to change as Blake said, or no Yeats I think, the centers fall apart. And people move to the left or the right. And how things evolve depends very significantly on that. Historically, when things fall apart, the preponderance of people move to the right because they are afraid. They are afraid based on exactly what we know in Buddhism, the three marks. They fear for their survival. They try to avoid the pain. And they struggle to hold on to their identity and who they think they are. Unfortunately, you cannot build a society; you cannot build a civilization based on anger and fear. Anger and fear are simply the tools by which those who have power can manipulate the population. And I think we can see this in our world today not only in this country but elsewhere. A lot of what we’re doing here is talking about technology and people are looking to technology to mitigate or free us from this kind of evolution. So this morning what I want to do is to talk very seriously about a different way of thinking about technology and to a lesser extent innovation. And if this is a little rough I have to ask for your indulgence. I had a talk plan. Yesterday I went for a walk with my friend Hokai who is here and he made a few comments on my ideas. They were very helpful. And though he wasn’t aware of this the result was I completely rewrote my talk an hour and a half ago. So thank you, Hokai. It is, well you will judge. Pardon? Hokai: I’ll never talk to you again. (laughter) Ken: It’s what friends are for. I actually am extremely grateful because it was very very helpful. So we tend to think of technology as this kind of things computers, electronic stuff. That’s certainly one way to think about it. But technology in its broader sense is a systematic way of doing things. And there are many different technologies. Chinese developed technologies from metallurgy 4000 years ago. Buddhism is extraordinary rich in spiritual technologies. One of the great inventions, I think it’s possibly the greatest invention of the 20th century, is the psychological technology for being able to stop the passing on of dysfunctional family patterns in one generation. If you refer to the Bible it says “..for the Lord thy God is a jealous god visiting with iniquity the sins of the father unto the children nigh unto the seventh generation.” Which is a way of saying family disfunctions take seven generations to play themselves out. We now have the technology due to Virginia Satir and others to stop this in one generation.

Rohan Gunatillake, in this presentation taken from the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011, explores how Buddhism can learn from the suffering of other established systems such as the music, publishing and journalism industries. Rohan outlines his presentation based on the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, explains how he used the concepts presented to launch an iPhone app, and challenges other entrepreneurs to join in the quest to bring these values to other business initiatives.

The following video took place at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011. Talk Description: In this talk, Ken McLeod explores how to move beyond us vs them, embrace the mystery of the human condition, and change the world.

The following video took place at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011. Talk Description: Usually Enlightenment is described in binary terms--enlightened or unenlightened. In this talk, Diane "Musho" Hamilton explores Enlightenment from an evolutionary or developmental point of view as ever-expanding identification.

The following video took place at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011, and was one of the three keynotes of the event. Talk Description: The qualities of a good gamer and a bodhisattva have more in common than you think. Find out how video games--unexpectedly!--have trained today's young people to be more prepared for Buddhist practice than any previous generation.

The following video took place at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011, and was one of the two organized panels of the event. Panel Description: A panel exploring how we can support 21st century dharma by harnessing the wisdom of the ages. Panelists include, Trudy Goodman, Vincent Horn, Ethan Nichtern, Diana Winston, and Jack Kornfield.

The following video took place at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011, and was part of a series of live talks, each 20 minutes in length. Talk Description: In this talk Ethan Nichtern explores the limitations of online dharma. Transcript: Ethan Nichtern: So the title of my talk is "The Internet Is Not Your Teacher" and there’s two iPads on the podium right now, which is kind of awesome. So, the first thing I’d like to say is obviously this entire gathering is a product of the internet and that’s great. On the way in here met six or seven people who I have previously only known through the Twitter, Facebook universe and I’m reading my notes off an iPad 2 so I can’t dislike the internet that much. In fact, I don’t dislike it at all. What I wanted to really say is that I think we’re at a very interesting time and a very empowering time in terms of the psychological and spiritual teachings moving further into our society through science, through community, through art, through politics. It’s also a really dangerous time. And my tradition which is a Vajrayana or Tantric tradition has this great framework for determining whether something is harmful or helpful which is called co-emergence which means when you want to figure out if something is destructive or empowering or enlightening or samsaric. It’s both. It’s always both and the internet is especially both. Like more both than anything has ever been. So let’s talk about the samsaric side as it relates to people wanting to study and practice genuine teachings of awakening. I think there are two aspects that are important here. The first is the cheapening of knowledge and wisdom. Where in the ancient world to even learn how to follow your breath was quite a journey over mountains or requesting teachings for a long period of time. And because it was quite a journey, you took the instructions that you received as important. And that’s not so from a respect standpoint of course it’d be great if we were all respectful of teachers, etc. But the main thing is how the process of learning happens and when you think what you’re receiving is important you tend to take more time to absorb and integrate it into your experience which is the whole point of how these teachings work. This isn’t ultimately a philosophy. As my teacher has been talking about recently the point of this is reworking how a human being experiences themselves not how they talk about themselves. Although if you change the way a human being experiences themselves I think the person should also be able to talk about themselves in a more engaging and interesting manner. True. But that’s secondary. So you can Wikipedia pretty much any Buddhist teachings you want. So I had this laughable experience where a lot of the Vajrayana teachings in the Shambhala tradition are said to be secret. There’s not a single Vajrayana teaching that I’ve ever received an empowerment for that you couldn’t Wikipedia right now. You could Wikipedia the surface of it, I mean, which is actually quite good. But if you’re doing seven other things at once and just want to find out what the word Mahamudra or Shikantaza means, and then have a conversation over Skype over what that means, or Twitter something about Mahamudra. Sorry tweet something about Mahamudra. It’s interesting. Let’s put it that way. Here’s the second thing which I think is even more co-emerging and didn’t really exist to the extent, in my understanding, in the ancient Asian cultures where these teachings came from. Our entire society, in the words of Generation X, has become very DIY. Do-it-yourself. The interesting thing about this term is that it started as an anti-consumerist phrase but it actually means you get to consume in the way you want. So there seems to be a strand of dharma, a huge strand of dharma, where we all want to become spiritual libertarians.

The following video took place at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011, and was part of a series of live talks, each 20 minutes in length. Talk Description: The neuroscience of meditation can help us understand how practice shapes the mind, and off...

The following video took place at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011, and was part of a series of live talks, each 20 minutes in length. Talk Description: Drawing from Buddhism, neuroscience, and personal experience, Kenneth Folk explains that enlightenment is a natural aspect of human development that is available to everyone. Transcript: Kenneth Folk: There was a time in the early 90s when I was doing a lot of long meditation retreats. And I think my mother felt it was necessary to explain to her friends what I was doing with my life. And she told her friends that Buddhism is not a religion but rather a philosophy, because in our household religion was frowned upon but philosophy was okay. And so my mother asked me is that right? Is Buddhism a philosophy? And I thought about that and replied, “Well Buddhism certainly is a religion. There are people who take Buddhism very seriously as a religion, and it is a philosophy, and it is a psychology, and it can be scholarly pursuit. But for me, the nugget the thing that is really special about Buddhism is that it’s a set of technologies for awakening.” And I would say that everything else is designed to support that. After all the word Buddha means awake. So we’re talking about awakening, enlightenment. I would like to normalize enlightenment. There’s an opportunity here as Buddhism moves into the West to shake things up a little bit, to change some attitudes. And one of the attitudes that I think is very pervasive is that enlightenment is for other people. It’s for people who wear traditional clothing and/or live in caves primarily. But it isn’t true. Enlightenment it’s an old word, maybe an outdated word for human development. And human development is available to humans. I’d like to talk about this using a kind of a formula that I only half jokingly think of as the three pillars of pragmatic dharma. It goes like this. Enlightenment is possible, that’s No. 1. No. 2, I know because it happened to me. And No. 3, here’s how. So I’m going to cycle through those three points over the next 20 minutes in a kind of iterative fashion going a little bit more deeply with each iteration to make the case that enlightenment is for all of us. So this is going to require explaining what do I mean when I say enlightenment. And also, by the way, when I say it happened to me. It happened to whom. If the essential insight is that there isn’t anybody here, why would I say such a preposterous thing? Well there’s a reason why I’m saying it and I’ll explain. Let me talk a little bit about the technologies that I’m referring to. So what is enlightenment? Let’s start with awakening, momentary awakening. This is where it starts. We are in an auditorium at the University of the West in Rosemead, California which is part of the Los Angeles Megalopolis. And Los Angeles is one of the greatest port cities in the world. There’s a port here at San Pedro. If you listen very carefully, maybe you can hear, maybe we can hear the ships in the harbor at San Pedro. [pauses] But on the other hand, no there’s no chance. San Pedro is probably, I don’t know, 40 miles from here. Los Angeles is big. We can’t hear these ships. And yet the very effort or the very inclination of the mind to listen for something that is so subtle and in this case undefined does something to the mind. Try it again. Listen for the ships in San Pedro. Never mind that you don’t know what it’s going to sound like. [pauses] There’s a possibility for a kind of openness and a kind of quiet in the mind where the mind stops yammering at you for a moment. So let’s called this a moment of awakeness. Enlightenment, I’m using it in a slightly different way, I’m talking about something developmental. So to understand enlightenment as a development or a developmental process, let’s establish two poles.

Description: Vincent Horn is a co-founder and director of the innovative media project Buddhist Geeks. In this talk, originally given at the Pacific Asia Art Museum, he explores the interdisciplinary insights to be gained by combining geek culture’s radical experimentation, facility with external technologies, and forward-thinking with Buddhism’s wisdom of the human condition, mind-training systems, […] The post Uniting Technology and Wisdom (Video) appeared first on Buddhist Geeks.

The following video took place at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011, and was part of the morning practice session, delivered by Diane "Musho" Hamilton.

The following video took place at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011, and was the opening Keynote of the event, delivered by Shinzen Young. Talk Description: How the cross-fertilization of Classical Enlightenment and the Modern Mind could radically alter the course of human history.